Page 7 of Bedding the Marquess
As a reply, Oliver gently pulled her arm through his and they walked together in perfect sync, him slowing his long-legged pace to match hers.
“What did the marquess have to say?” he asked her after they strolled for a few minutes in the watery late-morning light.
Screwing up her courage, Emily vowed to tell him everything. She wanted Oliver to have all of the information at his disposal so he might sift through it and decide how to move forwardwith it in his life. Carefully, she proceeded to share what she had learned. She described the old marquess and his wife, what Swanleigh had learned both as a child and while his mother rambled on her deathbed.
Then, she described the painting.
“It was as if the artist had painted you, my love.” Oliver’s arm tensed beneath her fingers; she wrapped her other hand around it as well. She longed to fully take him into her arms as she’d held him the previous night, but that would need to wait until later. “My gut is telling me Swanleigh is being truthful. I think…” She paused to nibble her lower lip. “I think you should meet and speak with him on your own.”
Oliver’s only reply was a terse, “We shall see.”
Rather than feelrelieved after Mrs. Black took her leave, Gideon experienced only white-hot anger.
Anger that his father had begotten a son upon a poor woman and cast her aside without so much as a single thought to her well-being or that of her child.
How the man had robbed Gideon of knowing his half sibling and damned that child to a life in the gutters.
Then again, even if he had been acknowledged, Oliver might not have fared much better in Gideon’s household—trading one hell for another. The old marquess had not been one to spare a rod or a rapier-sharp word, and certainly no solace would have been found with the marchioness.
As he sat heavily in one of the chairs in the library and cradled his leaden, aching head in his hands, Gideon wondered if it was still too early to begin drinking again.
Chapter Three
Caroline stared downthe snarling bronze griffin knocker of the Swanleigh townhouse for a long while before she even considered raising her hand to announce her arrival. Despite being one of her dearest friends—“her partner in crime,” the tabloids had once cried—she hadn’t seen Gideon in a month. It wasn’t for his lack of trying, however. He’d certainly extended invitations to her; tried to convince her to accompany him to their usual gaming haunts, wild fetes, to spend an evening carousing in Covent Garden with their group of mutual friends and fellow hell-raisers. Caroline, however, had declined them all.
She’d decided she couldn’t face him until she knew precisely the right words to say…and now the time had come. After three months—perhaps a bit too long due to an abundance of caution—she was finally ready to reveal to Gideon the consequence of their impulsivity.
Well, she supposedconsequencewas an unkind label to apply to the little being growing inside of her.
Caroline’s heart had hardly slowed its pace since the physician confirmed to the best of his abilities that she was expecting. Fear and excitement, dread and anticipation had all warred for supremacy inside of her. Her position was a precarious one—if not downright dangerous—in their Society. She had no husband, no supportive family, and, if there wereany shreds of her reputation remaining, they were about to be ignited and burned to ash.
She supposed her apprehension over the upcoming conversation was only natural, but her heart told her Gideon’s reaction would be kinder than most men in his position.
Still…
She was a woman accustomed to being let down, so she had not foregone formulating alternative plans. Didn’t women in her situation usually leave London to give birth in secret? At least, those were the whispers she’d caught. That was likely her best option should Gideon wish to step aside. While she abhorred Cornwall, it was the farthest, safest option for her to see the pregnancy through, enter confinement, and give birth.
She had not yet sorted out what would be done once she needed to care for the child on her own, but that was a storm she would weather. She had no choice. She refused to consider abandoning the baby to the care of strangers, no matter what Society dictated.
In her secret heart of hearts, Caroline hoped it would not come to that, and Gideon would be pleased by the news and wish to offer support. After all, these circumstances were as much her fault as his—if not more so, because she had been the one to proposition him.
She had thought it over a great deal and decided that she would not demand that he marry her…though she would not lie and say the idea of marriage to him had not crossed her mind.
She adored him.
She was enamored of him.
A place in her heart would always be reserved for her dearest friend.
But she would love him from afar if that was his wish.
“You can do this,” Caroline murmured shakily to herself. She’d already screwed up her courage, completed the processof donning her favorite marigold-colored morning dress and peony-pink spencer, allowed her maid to spend the better part of an hour shaping her rose-gold hair into an artful style of ringlets and pins, and taken a hired hack from her small townhouse to Mayfair. She wouldn’t allow all of that to go to waste now. She raised her hand and knocked before closing her eyes and retreating into her memories for support while she waited for the butler to answer.
It felt so long since she’d been a starry-eyed girl in braids who begged Nanny for more stories of knights and daring battles. She’d mourned the loss of that innocence many times over at that point, but only in recent years had she come to acknowledge to herself that the true demise of her childhood had come about in preparation for her debut into Society, and the fallout shortly thereafter. Gideon had been the only one who saw her for who she really was and appreciated her as more than just a salacious tabloid headline.
Back when he’d been only the Earl of Eastwich, Gideon had been the only ray of sunlight in her bleak new existence after her ruination. Everyone knew his father, the Marquess of Swanleigh, to be quite dark and domineering, so Caroline had initially been shocked that Gideon had been allowed to interact with her. She had learned very early on, however, that father and son were not particularly close, and Gideon was not one who deferred to his father’s preferences.
She and Gideon had met on several occasions before her scandal, and his easy smile was always quite charming. At first, she’d been afraid he’d only come to harass her or offer a vulgar proposition, given her new status as a “fallen woman,” but he offered only the sincerest friendship. He worked quite diligently to earn her trust, bringing her new books to read when she felt too low to venture outdoors, making her laugh when she would rather cry. Though she’d lately realized she wasa horrendous judge of character, she could sense no ulterior motives in him. Through it all, he afforded her time and space when even she was unaware it was something her healing soul required—not only after the assault upon her person by a man who was supposed to be her sweetheart, but the banishment and condemnation from her family. He always had the uncanny ability to bring sunshine and joy wherever he went and morph himself into whatever it was a person needed most. In him, she’d found a true friend who could see past the scandal to what lay within her.
